Lazare Carnot

Lazare Carnot (13 May 1753-2 August 1823) was a member of the Committee of Public Safety of the French First Republic from 14 August 1793 to 6 October 1794 and a member of the French Directory from 4 November 1795 to 5 September 1797. He was nicknamed the "organizer of victory" for his role in winning the French Revolutionary Wars.

Biography
Lazare Carnot was born in Nolay, Cote-d'Or, Kingdom of France on 13 May 1753, and he met Benjamin Franklin at an engineering school, the Mezieres School of Enginering. He served in the engineering corps of the Royal French Army before becoming a scientist, and he decided to enter politics during the French Revolution. He became a member of the Legislative Assembly in 1791 as an independent, and he was appointed to the Committee of Public Safety in 1793. Carnot instituted the levee en masse to mobilize the people of France against its enemies at the time of the French Revolutionary Wars. Carnot was a staunch republican, overseeing the quelling of royalist unrest in the countryside and taking no steps to condemn the Reign of Terror. However, he sided with the conservative Thermidorians during the Thermidorian Reaction of 27 July 1794, and Carnot would become a member of the French Directory. He held various positions during the 1800s, and he served as Minister of War under Napoleon Bonaparte's French Consulate. In 1802, he voted against Napoleon holding consular powers for life, and he refused to take any high offices under the First French Empire after 1804, as he was a convinced republican. He would later serrve as Minister of the Interior under Napoleon I during the Hundred Days in the summer of 1815, and he was exiled by the Bourbon Restoration government for his decision to vote to King Louis XVI of France's execution back in 1793. He died in Magdeburg, Prussia in 1823 at the age of 70.